Dear NaBro

By Rahul Da Cunha |Posted 25-May-2014

Dear NaBro, Kem cho, sahib? First of all, congrats. No one expected such a landslide victory. Bhajapmanship truly at its most dominant. Your position is enviable — No annoying coalitions to contend with. No Trinamool to appease.

No AIADMK giving you dhamkis. No Mulayam trying to samajwadi you. And no questioning opposition. If I may put your victory in perspective, Congress’s non-governance and your newsworthiness helped. But frankly, I don’t know what you’ve planned nationally.

Illustration/ Amit Bandre

You spent so much of your pre-election soundbyte time bludgeoning the Gandhis that I missed your blueprint for growth. Plus, I’m not a great believer in this ‘Gujarat model’ thing. To me what works in Baroda may not work for Bharat. The Peter Principle is a great leveller.

Excuse my honesty, but I’m a reluctant follower. Your aggression is acidic. Just going by your pre-election approach you mock and malign. Resort to history when it suits you. You silence anyone who crosses you. You do tend to take credit for what’s not necessarily yours. And most of your quotes are slanderous and self promotional in nature, rather than strategic. So I don’t really know what your future plans are. Or who you really are.

But I will admit, there’s no one else to lead us from the cataclysmic seas to calmer waters. You clearly are the man. (Well 31 per cent of the voters feel that). The point is, the nation is looking at you with massive hope.

But tsunami victories come with tectonic expectations. And when they aren’t fulfilled, oh boy, those are not ‘acche din’. The last time we were this pissed off with the Congress was post Indira’s Emergency. And you saw what happened to your fellow Gujarati Morarji Desai’s Janata rag tag army in 1977.

But you have a clear window of 10 years for sure. RaGa’s gone Amethi-wards to lick his wounds. Mummyji will jet between Rae Bareily and Rome. And Kejri will take some time to get back on his magic broom.You’ve been handed a country on a silver lotus. Dictatorship is a double-edged sword, I’m afraid. Indians are a funny people.

Everyone wants a dictator to set the house in order but then desires its dal-chawaal democracy. Not sure if we respond well to the wand or the whip. So, Modisaab could you take off those rose tainted glasses and give us your 20/20 vision for the country?

What interests me is, can an individualist run India? Will you really roll up the sleeves of that size-56 inch shirt and get down to hard work, because we really are the hardest-working people on God’s earth. And we deserve the best.

Monetarily we’re in a mess. But it’s the mental pain we’re in that concerns us more. Allow us to see whether your holograms shine through or are they just hollow promises. Aapko meri shubhkamanayein.

Warmly RaBro

Rahul da Cunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahuldacunha62 @gmail.com. The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.